NIKO MARKS – DAY OF KNOWING – PLANET E

Believe it or not, this is the 44th studio album Niko Marks has made. That’s a remarkable achievement, even more so when you consider how instinctive his work continues to be, treading all sorts of lines that bring techno, house, jazz and funk into focus and out again. Because of his flexibility ‘Day Of Knowing’ is the sort of record that keeps on coming back for more, especially when the likes of ‘Elle Est Une Danseuse A Minuit’ (‘A dancer at midnight’) enjoy exotic harmonies and jazz-flavoured improvisations. Marks also avoids the trap of giving himself too much free rein, so that the older style tracks like ‘Soul Meter’, which lives and breathes disco, rub shoulders with ‘Crank Shaft’, a more obviously machine-based Detroit track. This is part of a greater collaboration between Planet E and !K7, who distribute the record – and certainly bodes well for their work over the rest of 2017.